


Whiteout

by livenudebigfoot



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cabin Fic, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Past Abuse, Post-Canon, tagging this everyone lives would be inaccurate, viggo and avi specifically live
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:48:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22592785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot
Summary: They are defined by their empire: the deals Avi brokered, the bodies Viggo buried.That's all gone now.
Relationships: Avi/Viggo Tarasov
Comments: 17
Kudos: 42
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NeverwinterThistle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/gifts).



Avi first saw the cabin in an aerial photograph. It was just a tiny green-brown box in a massive green-brown forest, circled in red pen so it couldn’t be missed. The buyer who scouted the location had never been there himself - only flown overhead in a helicopter - but he assured Avi of its amenities. Two bedrooms. One bath. A fireplace. A woodstove for cooking. Electricity, courtesy of a gas-powered generator. Running water, courtesy of a well dug on the property. Hidden deep within a private hunting preserve, itself hidden deep within the Russian taiga, it was incredibly remote. The shabby little place didn’t impress Avi, but it didn’t need to be impressive. It needed to be secret, hidden, unassuming.

It was perfect. An ideal safehouse.

So Avi set the wheels in motion. Plans were made, finders fees haggled over. Most of it happened in Avi's head: which secret account to take the money from, which contractor to make the necessary security updates to the property, which hired killer to eliminate their buyer once the deed was done. An ugly detail - the guy did a good job - but that’s the price you pay for secrecy.

As it was, Avi paid him. Sent him on his way happy. Alone in his office, he gathered up the necessary documents, folded up the picture, put them all together in a file to hide away. He finished his cigarette. He tackled the next thing on his list.

That all feels like it happened so long ago. _This morning_ feels like it happened so long ago. 

Avi always thought the end might be loud. The ideal scenario - the plan - was to get old and retire peacefully. But Avi’s confident, not foolish. The possibility that the Tarasov crime family’s reign over New York City would end with a raid by a rival gang or the FBI or the ATF or some other acronym has always been an option for Avi. He’s walked through his various escape plans and emergency procedures so many times, he could enact them in his sleep. He imagined there would be gunfire. He imagined Viggo shouting some last minute orders in his face.

The penthouse is quiet.

There aren’t very many of them left now. 

Victor died yesterday, a century ago. Kirill's been gone for mere hours, which is an idea that stings. And Iosef…

Well, he heard what Viggo said to John Wick, what he traded away to save both their skins. Better to start thinking of Iosef in the past tense. Easier that way. Avi swallows a cold lump in his throat.

Viggo’s got a head start on forgetting. Avi smelled weed when he passed his closed office door.

He lays it all out on his desk, looking for holes and unfilled needs. They have new names. They have cash. They have a place to hide, the place from the blurry photograph. Low on the totem pole, as far as Viggo’s safehouses go. It’s not the Hong Kong penthouse or the Moscow building, and it’s certainly not the house in Venice. But, crucially, Avi bought it only two years ago, three years after the Impossible Task. John Wick doesn’t know about it. Nobody knows about it. Viggo barely knows about it.

They have a hiding place. They have the money Avi hid away in overseas accounts that they can siphon away, bit by bit. They have an ally in Perkins, for however long that lasts. They have a helicopter ready to take them away. If they’re lucky enough to reach the helicopter, they’ll have time, time to put miles and oceans and assassins between Viggo and John Wick.

He can do this. Avi grips the edge of his desk, takes a deep breath.

He can do this.

* * *

Avi’s got blood on his shoes. 

He was aware of that before now, but he hasn’t really had the headspace to address it. There’s a crumpled napkin tucked away in the cup holder of their rented truck. He takes it, bends low to blot the blood away to a faint, tacky remnant.

Beside him, Viggo groans.

Avi’s just trying not to look at him, otherwise he’s gonna be fucking angry. They’ve still got miles to go and Avi thinks maybe if he can get to the safehouse, if he can take a shower and change his suit and eat some real food, maybe he can tamp this down. Maybe he won’t scream in Viggo’s face.

Viggo should’ve left Marcus alone. If they’d left Marcus alone, maybe Wick would’ve taken Iosef as sacrifice enough. Maybe a few more of their guys would be alive. Maybe they wouldn’t be quite this fucked.

The truck hits a pothole and the whole car jumps, sends Avi and Viggo knocking into each other in the back seat.

Viggo makes a tight, miserable sound.

Avi risks looking.

Viggo sits tousled, suit rumpled, knuckles bloody. He lost his hat somewhere along the journey and his hair is in sweaty disarray. His skin is ashen, his eyes are ringed in purple. He’s exhausted and in pain and sober for the first time in what must be hours.

The anger in Avi fades, very slightly.

“Doin’ OK, boss?” Avi asks.

Viggo answers in Russian, muffled by his hands.

Avi bites back the instinct to remind him, _English, Viggo_. It’s not necessary. Avi knows what he means. He rummages in the pockets of his coat until he finds the little plastic bottle. Avi shakes two white pills into the palm of his own hand, presses them into Viggo’s. “For the hangover.”

Viggo sighs once, very softly, and takes the pills dry. He tilts back against the headrest, eyes closed. “Спасибо,” he mumbles.

It’s almost the only Russian Avi knows. “You’re welcome.”

Viggo points to the bloody napkin Avi’s still holding in his hand. He clears his throat. “You’re hurt?”

Avi shakes his head. Not exactly true; he’s still kinda banged up from when Yuri grabbed him by the collar of his coat and threw him into the chopper, but Avi suspects that if he complained about a few scrapes and bruises when so many of their guys are dead, he’d sound pretty stupid. 

“Good.” Viggo rubs his hands together. His eyes are a little clearer, a little sharper. “How much longer?” 

“Couple more hours.” 

“News from home?” 

News of Wick, he means. Or of Abram, maybe. Maybe of Iosef, if he’s still lying in that warehouse or if someone has cleaned him up and taken him away. “No news,” Avi tells him. “I’m offline for now.”

Not that it seems like John Wick’s style to track a phone, but Avi’s determined that if their safehouse fails, it won’t be his fault. He destroyed his phone back in New York. He has no idea what’s going on. It’s killing him.

Viggo, watching him from beneath hooded eyelids, seems to know it. “You should sleep,” he says. “There's nothing to plan.”

Avi shrugs. “I’ve never been able to sleep in the car.”

“No?” says Viggo, seeming to consider every time he’s shared a car with Avi, if there was ever a moment when he dozed off. Maybe he’s just surprised that they can learn anything new about each other at this point. 

“Never.”


	2. Chapter 2

Avi’s first sight of their new home is a chain link fence.

Beyond stretches a dirt road, overgrown with grass, and the deep shadows that lie under trees. There isn’t a soul around for miles. 

Here’s the plan, as far as Avi’s concerned. Three years ago, when he bought this place, Avi had two caretakers hired to manage the grounds, keep away trespassers, and establish continuity. So if anyone happened to notice that there were people in the hunting preserve, that there were supplies being delivered every month, that smoke curled up from the chimney in the cabin, it would seem to be business as usual. Last night - _two nights ago?_ He’s so jetlagged - back before they killed Marcus, Avi gave the orders for the caretakers to be fired, issued comfortable severance packages, and sent on their way. 

The cabin stands empty now, ready for them.

Things happen very quickly when their two-car caravan arrives at the cabin, which is so shabby and crusted with lichen that it makes Avi’s heart sink. Their men, the ones driving their car and unloading their luggage and taking Avi’s orders are Yuri and Ivan. They’re mid-tier, not nobodies but not major players either. Not the guys Avi would have picked for this job, but they’re still alive, so that means something.

Avi hands them their instructions. They will take one of the trucks together, drive back to civilization, and part ways. Ivan will head east. Yuri will head west. They will lay down false trails, and if they’re lucky, John Wick will waste all his time pursuing them instead of hunting Viggo.

Viggo and Avi will stay here and wait. When Avi ran this scenario in the past, he imagined that Kirill would stay close to Viggo, to keep him safe. He hadn’t imagined himself here at all.

Yuri and Ivan do a security check on the musty cabin to make sure the previous caretakers have truly left, and find only dirty dishes in the sink. They carry Viggo’s bag up to the master bedroom in the loft, Avi’s bag to the smaller room directly beneath the loft. They’re kind enough to light a fire in the grate. And then they depart.

Avi’s uneasy, already.

As they settle into the safehouse, Avi’s almost embarrassed. After years of the penthouse, of the finest of everything, he expects Viggo Tarasov to live in a shack. 

Or, being kinder to himself, a cabin. One main floor, a loft, and a cellar. The necessities, no matter how bare. A shelf of shabby, dog-eared Russian paperbacks for entertainment. Winter weather gear and hunting rifles, for protection.

The truth, Avi’s realizing, is that he never expected Viggo to set foot in this place. He expected it to be one of those properties that sits there and accrues value. Maybe they'd rent it out so Russian oligarchs can pay them to blow the heads off deer, maybe they'd sell it off and make it someone else’s problem, but Viggo would never have to live here.

Certainly, Avi wouldn’t.

He thought maybe Iosef. Iosef, with his lack of respect and shitty impulse control, could’ve maybe benefited from a month under house arrest in the middle of nowhere. It might have clarified things for him in a way that a punch to the gut never would.

Avi looks up to find Viggo leaning against the railing that stops the loft from being a merciless plunge to the ground floor. He stares into the dusty rafters with exhausted, almost academic interest. “It’s. Ah. What’s the word? Rustic?”

“It’s a shithole, Viggo. You don’t have to be polite.”

Viggo shrugs. “I'm not polite. It will do.”

He guesses Viggo’s from here. Or, not _here_ \- Avi’s not sure where he’s from, exactly - but someplace hard and miserable. It’s a downgrade from the penthouse, but perhaps it’s not as unfamiliar for him as it is for Avi.

“We should relax now that we can,” Avi tells him. “There’s running water. You could take a shower, if you need to.” Not that he’s dropping hints.

“What I need, Avi,” Viggo says, “is the hair of the dog.”

Avi smiles weakly. “I can do that for you.”

It’s one of Avi’s strong suits: anticipating needs, from crises to creature comforts. When it came time to stock the safehouse with food, Avi placed a modest selection of alcohol on the shopping list. Down in the earthen cellar, there’s a well-stocked pantry with enough food to take them through the end of the world, and yes, there's vodka. Whiskey, too, which is what Avi selects. Seems to fit the mood: half celebration, half wake.

If he was smart, Avi reflects as he ascends the creaking steps, he'd withhold this particular comfort. Tell Viggo he’s had enough for today and usher him off to the shower or up to bed. He just sobered up. He hasn’t had a clear head in days. If Avi wants to do any planning today - and he does, his hands are shaking with how badly he needs something to do - he’ll need Viggo sober.

But what the fuck is he supposed to do? Guy lost his home, his men, his son, everything. All in...three days? Jesus, only three? Of course Viggo should be drinking. _Avi_ should be drinking.

When Avi comes up from the cellar, Viggo’s sitting on the couch, contemplating two chipped and battered mugs on the coffee table. “Glassware was...limited. Sit,” he says, gesturing to an armchair by his side.

Obediently, Avi sits, passes him the bottle when Viggo holds out his hand.

Viggo pours them each a little, quiet and careful, and for a moment it’s almost like they’re home again.

Avi drinks a little too deeply, a little too fast and it burns on the way down. He winces. Doesn’t cough, because the first time Viggo poured him a drink to celebrate a job well done, Avi choked out of nervousness and Viggo never let him live it down.

He sets the mug down hard on the coffee table. Viggo has already drained his and is absorbed in studying the label on the whiskey bottle. “This is all we have?” he asks.

“Nah, there’s a whole shelf downstairs.” Maybe that's information he shouldn't share.

“In that case,” Viggo murmurs. He refills both their mugs.

They’re about to dig a hole together, him and Viggo. Avi loosens his tie.

“I’ll need time to get a handle on what assets we still have at our disposal. Who's still alive, how much money we can access without drawing attention to ourselves, who’ll still work with us. Once we know that, we can start talking next steps.”

“Avi,” Viggo whispers, throat ragged.

“Obviously, putting more of our guys in his way would be...ill-advised. But there’s gotta be another assassin willing to take a shot at him. If we can get enough funds together, there will be someone who wants the clout that comes along with killing John Wick.”

Viggo holds up his hand as though he’s trying to stem the tide, but Avi’s on a tear.

“He’s not _immortal_ , Viggo. He’s not the boogeyman, he’s not whatever bullshit Russian goblin thing you kept calling him, he’s a guy who eats and sleeps and shits, and somebody somewhere has to be able to kill him-”

“ _Avi!_ ”

Avi sputters to an unsteady stop. A tiny stream of whiskey sloshes over the rim of the mug and down his wrist. His ears are hot.

“Am I correct…” Viggo murmurs, staring deep into his mug, “...in saying that we are low on funds?”

“You’re...I mean, let me be clear: we have enough to get by. We’re cash poor _right now_ , yeah. But there’s the off-shore accounts, there’s some nest eggs hidden here and there, a few assets we can sell off...there are moves we can make. Give me a wi-fi signal and one or two contacts that aren’t dead and will still fucking talk to me and some time…”

“ _Time_ ,” Viggo repeats.

Avi sighs deeply. “Yeah. Yeah, time.”

“If it’s a matter of time, then you can let me drink in peace for one night.”

Avi knocks back his drink. Voice tight from the burn, he whispers, “Whatever you say, boss.”

Viggo pours them each another drink, knocks their mugs together in a perfunctory sort of way. He sets his mug down hard, pats his pockets.

Almost without thinking, Avi fishes a squashed pack of smokes out from his coat pocket and throws it to Viggo. 

He fumbles a little. In the time it takes Viggo to shake a cigarette out of the pack and put it to his mouth, Avi’s found his lighter.

“Where would I be…” Viggo says as he leans in close to the flame, as he takes Avi by the wrist to hold him steady, “...if I didn’t still have you?”

It’s like that night, five years ago, when John Wick won Viggo’s rigged game. The victory was unexpected, and Viggo was never prepared to honor the agreement, but...well, Viggo is a gentleman, in his way, and letting John Wick retire seemed like such a little thing in exchange for the city of New York on a silver platter. Viggo summoned Avi to the penthouse that night, to account for the windfall. 

They never slept, the two of them. Barely ate. Avi spread his papers, his laptop over the bar and Viggo took up the seat beside him, diligently pouring drink after drink. The night slipped, tilted, and what began as a serious look at what they stood to gain became a sloppy, half-giddy postmortem. Their enemies were dead. Empires lay in ruins. They had played with fire and won. To hide from terror, they had to laugh.

In that breathless space, Viggo curled his hand around the back of Avi’s neck and leaned in close, hot breath filling the air between them. He’d murmured, scratching at the nape of Avi’s neck, “What would I do without you?”

And then one of them closed the gap. Avi isn’t sure who. He hopes he’s too smart for that, but it seems unlikely that Viggo was the sole responsible party.

He knows for certain that Viggo kissed back.

What happened next happened so quickly. Viggo pressed Avi’s back into the bar, pinning him in place. Avi braced one hand against Viggo’s shoulder with this plan to push him back and restore the natural order, but instead he made a fist in the lapel of Viggo’s jacket and dragged him closer.

It was _easy_. That’s the part that haunts Avi. It was so easy to touch Viggo, to hold tight to him, to be caught in his grip. Viggo twisted Avi’s arm sharp behind his back so he’s a prisoner there, barely able to wriggle as Viggo forced his hand down the front of Avi’s pants.

 _This is a mistake,_ Avi thought as he reached for Viggo’s belt with his free hand. _This is a terrible fucking mistake._ His fingers shook as he undid Viggo’s zipper and took his cock in hand, as Viggo grazed the rough pad of his thumb over the head of Avi’s dick, as they shared a fleeting moment of horrible eye contact.

No more of that. Viggo pressed their foreheads tight together so they wouldn’t be tempted to do it again and Avi locked one leg around the back of Viggo’s thigh to keep him close, too close to look at.

As they touched each other, as Avi jerked Viggo off with jagged slowness, as Viggo bit Avi’s lower lip and squeezed his balls hard enough to technically qualify as a threat, as they both came over each other’s hands with staggered, shocked whines, Avi just kept thinking: _I have fucked this up so bad._

They separated after that, sheepishly. Cleaned themselves up with bar napkins and put themselves back in order. No evidence remaining save for Avi’s shirt being unusually wrinkled and Viggo’s hair being faintly out of place.

Neither was willing to speak.

To break the silence, Avi pointed out that he had work to do and Viggo decided he’d better call Kirill to make some headway on Avi’s grand plans and it was easy to pretend it never happened. No one saw. No one heard. There was no blow to Viggo’s reputation, or Avi’s for that matter.

These days, Avi feels like he dodged a bullet. He doesn’t even like to remember it.

Avi snaps his lighter shut, tucks it away in his pocket. “If you didn’t have me, you’d still be in New York, sir.”

Viggo exhales a plume of smoke, sprawls back on the couch. “I’d be dead.” He says it very carefully, as though it’s simply an alternative possibility and not a terrible fate he’s escaped. He blinks up at the rafters. “This place _is_ kind of shit.”

Avi rubs his temples. “I know it’s not the retirement you had in mind.”

Viggo falls horribly silent. He pours another drink, tries to pour one for Avi too, but Avi puts his hand over the mug.

“I’m fine. I’m drunk. You don’t have to get me more drunk.”

Viggo slumps back, brow creased. He looks almost wounded.

Over the next few hours, Viggo drinks with joyless steadiness. No savoring, no conversation, just grimly and silently drinking himself insensible. Avi doesn’t try to cut him off. He just sits with Viggo. Just watches over him. Before long, Viggo’s hands get clumsy and his eyes start to drift shut, and then it’s an easy thing to take the mug from his hand. Avi gives Viggo a gentle push to send him drifting sideways on the couch. He finds a heavy blanket and throws it over Viggo, who lets out only a mumbling protest.

Before long, he’s deep asleep.

As Viggo’s boozy snores fill the room, Avi thinks to himself: _I don’t think I handled that right._

He handled it OK. They made it here. They’re both alive. Viggo’s resting. Given the odds, it’s not bad. But Avi’s not used to settling for anything less than perfection.

Something to get used to, he guesses.

Avi stands. Avi paces, wobbly. He decides he can’t take it anymore, tears open his envelope, takes out the phone inside, turns it on with shaking fingers.

He sinks onto the couch, runs his fingers through his hair. Of fucking course.

No service.


	3. Chapter 3

Oatmeal fuses hard to the bottom of the pot and Avi thinks to himself, not for the first time, that he’s not cut out for this. 

He can’t cook. Or, he hasn’t tried to cook in a long time. That’s never been something Viggo needed from him. Back when he started working for Viggo, food was one of the first things Avi outsourced. Not worth the effort, not worth the time. There were other people for that.

Now, _he’s_ other people.

Avi scoops the soft, unburnt oatmeal from the center of the pot and sets that aside for Viggo. It’s maybe more care than he needs to take.

Viggo's struggling, he thinks. Viggo sleeps erratically, desperately: in his own bed, on the couch in front of the fire, at the kitchen table with his head tipped back. Viggo drinks determinedly, like a man taking his medicine. Viggo eats when he remembers to or when Avi coaxes him to, and the quality of the food isn't helping. Viggo takes walks around the preserve alone, comes back pale and shivering and quiet.

Viggo makes awful sounds when he thinks Avi can’t hear him. These terrible, shuddering groans at night, a sound filled with so much suffering that Avi feels like he should go to him, except he doesn’t know how he could help. He thinks the best way he could help might be to help Viggo pretend he can't hear it.

Viggo came to him once, a dark shape in Avi’s bedroom doorway. He never spoke, never made a sound above a wet, unsteady breath. When Avi woke up enough to ask him, “What do you need, sir?” Viggo shambled off into the dark of the cabin and didn’t come back.

Right now, Viggo’s awake and sitting at the kitchen table, eyes dull and tired. He’s awake, at least. That means Avi can leave him alone. 

“I checked the maps that the previous caretakers left behind,” Avi says as he sets the salvaged oatmeal in front of Viggo. “Looks like there’s a hunter’s blind a little over a mile from here. It’s the highest point in the whole preserve, easy. If I’m going to get a signal from anywhere, it’s gonna be there.”

Viggo blinks sleepily, fumbles for a spoon.

“Figured I could check in on...on the John Wick situation. Find out who’s left of our guys. Check on Abram.” He hopes that will light a spark in Viggo’s eyes, but they remain dark, vacant. “You, uh. You want to come with me?”

He fixes Avi with one bloodshot eye.

Avi shrugs, pushing down his anger. “Suit yourself. See you later, sir.”

As he zips himself into a thick parka, Avi thinks about the limits of pity. He’s never experienced pity before, not with this intensity. He’s not sure how far he should let this go.

He laces his boots, leaves Viggo bent miserable over his breakfast.

Already, it hurts to be outside. It’s the kind of cold that slices to the bone, that makes you think the skin on your cheeks will freeze and crack if you change expressions. If you smile too much. Fortunately, Avi has nothing to smile about. He bends into the wind, crunches through the deep snow into the woods.

He supposes it’s not pity so much as empathy. Because he feels what Viggo feels, although less acutely. The loss of his home. The loss of the empire, everything they worked together to build. The loss of Iosef. 

The sting of losing Iosef is almost a surprise. Avi’s known the kid since he was twelve and Iosef’s been a spoiled, mean, impulsive little shit the whole goddamn time. It’s his fault this happened, all of it. If Iosef had left John Wick alone, if he hadn’t felt entitled to everything he saw…

There were changes they could’ve made. Steps they could have taken. Avi sees them now, in hindsight. Maybe that’s what stings.

But when Iosef got arrested for stealing cars, he used his one phone call on Avi. And when that thing in Vegas went south, Avi was the one who handled it, so quiet and graceful that Viggo never found out, and Iosef thanked Avi for maybe the first time in his life. And when Iosef decided he wanted to step up, join the family business for real, he went to Avi for advice on working with his father.

Iosef wasn’t Avi’s kid. But when he and Viggo were tearing their hair out over whatever stupid thing Viggo’s stupid kid did this time, it felt that way.

So he’s bereaved, he guesses.

Avi steps into a deep snow bank, sinks deeper than he means to. He almost loses his boot, climbing out.

The hunter’s blind is right where the maps said it was. It’s not anything, really. Just boards nailed along the length of a tree, a ladder up to a small platform with a sloping ceiling, a tiny treetop pyramid. 

The blind creaks in the wind and under Avi’s weight. Fucking thing’s a death trap, held together with rotting wood, tetanus, and a prayer.

But when he turns on his phone and gets an honest-to-god signal, this wave of calm washes over him.

He’s in control. He’s finally in control.

* * *

“Abram is alive,” Avi announces. His face is practically melting off in the warmth from the cabin, but he’s feeling too confident to care.

While he was gone, Viggo made the transition from miserably hungover to comfortably drunk. He looks alright, like he took a shower and changed his clothes. Trimmed his beard, maybe. Reclined on the couch, reading glasses perched on his nose, romance novel on his chest, he looks positively sober. Only a gentle flush across the bridge of his nose gives the game away. That and the bottle of vodka sitting on the end table. It’s barely touched. At least he’s pacing himself. Viggo sits up, eyes sparkling with faint interest. “You spoke to my brother?”

Avi shakes his head, knocks the snow out of his boots. “Just checked in with a few contacts. Wick hit the chop shop pretty bad, but let Abram live in exchange for the car, which...who gives a shit. Let him have the car.”

Viggo nods slowly. Who, indeed, gives a shit?

“Perkins is dead,” Avi continues, removing his gloves and hat and tossing them in a corner. “Which isn’t a huge surprise. You fuck with The Continental that hard, I mean...anyway, she was a good asset. It’s a fucking shame.”

“She was bold,” Viggo solemnly agrees.

Avi takes his coat off, hangs it up. “Wick’s still active, probably still looking for you, but he seems to have dialed it back. Yuri’s on track, Ivan’s on track, no trouble so far. Seems like most of our guys on the mainland are laying low for now, so it’s hard to get a handle on numbers, but Abram’s gonna regroup, and...we’ll see. We won’t have the leverage we used to have, but it’s a start.”

Avi waits. For orders, he supposes. For Viggo’s thoughts on the situation. To be asked for his recommendations, because Avi has a few. For praise, maybe. It’s a little startling, how much he wants praise right now.

What he gets is nothing. Viggo takes a careful, reasonable sip of vodka and leans back into his book. 

“You got…you got nothing to say about any of that?”

Viggo shrugs, peers at him over his reading glasses. “We don't know what we have. And so, nothing can be done.”

It’s not what Avi needs to hear. It’s not wrong, either, exactly. It’s caution, reason, patience. The kind of thing he might’ve advised if they were back home and this was an ordinary situation - _hold back, wait for more information, we don’t know what we’re dealing with_ \- but right now it might as well be _Fuck you_ as far as Avi’s concerned.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Weighs options, hands bunched into fists. And then he takes a seat next to Viggo and pours himself a drink.

“Can I read that book,” Avi asks, “when you’re done with it?”

“It’s in Russian,” Viggo murmurs absently. “You don’t know how.”

Avi slumps deep into the couch.


	4. Chapter 4

The improvement in Viggo’s mood is short-lived. There’s a cycle to it, Avi finds. Viggo will start to get sober, which makes him ill-tempered and mean and hopelessly sad. So he’ll drink to get through it. He’ll brighten up a little: clean up, get dressed, take an interest, talk to Avi like he’s really there. He’ll keep drinking, trying to stay in that spot where he’s present but not in pain. And then, eventually, he’ll slip over the edge and the whole thing starts again.

It’s not new. Viggo’s always been prone to smoothing away a bad night with a drink or three. But it’s never been this bad before.

So Avi looks after him, as best he can. Makes sure that he eats at least twice a day, that he’s comfortable, that his mind is on something, anything. Avi hasn’t had to work this hard to keep Viggo’s attention since his first days on the job when he was desperate to prove his worth. It’s something to do, at least. But it’s unrewarding.

It’s one of those days where the wind howls around the cabin so hard that they can feel it creaking around them and it’s so horribly, blisteringly cold that even the promise of time alone can’t lure either of them outdoors. Avi stands in the kitchen, making pot after pot of coffee and staring out the kitchen window at branches whipping in the wind.

“You hunt, ever?” Avi asks, head pressed to the cool glass.

“When I was young, yes.”

The sound of Viggo’s voice makes him jump. He hasn’t said a word in hours.

He sits on the floor before the fire, weathered face bathed in orange light. He gazes deep into the flames. “We were raised in the city, Abram and I. But my father, he came from a small village in the country and was raised to catch his food, or else there would be no food at all. It was important to him that his sons learn the same. So he took us away to the woods for a few days.” He warms his hands with his breath. “To make men of us.”

Avi takes a cup of coffee in hand and leans back against the kitchen table. “How old were you?”

“Abram was 10. I was 8.” He shrugs off Avi’s stare. “The shack we slept in was worse than this. It whistled in the wind, through these holes in the walls so big you could get your hand through them. We had to break the ice on the drinking water every morning. Abram got frostbite, nearly lost his toes.

“We hunted deer. My father had an idea he would sell off the meat. Sort of a two for one thing: stronger sons and a little cash on the side. I’d never been permitted to hold a gun before. I had, but always in secret, and I never fired. I took a few shots at cans, the morning of that first day, but…” Viggo sighs. “Waste of ammunition, my father said. It was no real practice."

Every word he says seems to take enormous effort, but Viggo can't seem to stop himself.

“The first day, we shoot nothing. We see a deer, it bolts. My father takes a shot, he misses. Fucking furious. We didn’t say a word all that night for fear of what he would do to us.

“Second day, Abram spots this doe hidden away in tall grass. Almost invisible. Very quiet, he shows my father, and he is so proud that he lets Abram take the shot. And Abram had shot before, in secret, so he was quite good. The deer goes down. Beautiful. We take it back to camp, butcher it. My father is very happy. Abram can relax; he’s safe for now. No luck for me.

“Third day. Last day. I am at the back, moving very quiet. Just watching and listening. And I see it. This big fucking deer. A man deer. You know...?”

“Buck?” Avi offers.

Viggo snaps his fingers. “да, a buck. Big antlers. I see it and I think, _If I run to tell my father or Abram, the buck will run away_ . And I also think, _If I am the one to shoot this buck, my father will be very pleased with me._ So I stop thinking. I fire.”

Viggo takes a long, serious sip. 

“Of course, I was very small, then. The recoil was…” He whistles, mimes an explosion with his hands. “But I did not miss. The buck fell. I hit the stomach instead of the heart.” He sighs deeply. “It’s a slow death, to be shot in the stomach. You know.”

Avi does know. He’s ordered it, for some.

“So this thing is dying there, on the ground. And my father and Abram come to see what I’ve done. So my father hands me his knife and says, _You end it, Viggo._ So I do. Lot of...lot of effort, for a child to drive the knife in, but I do.”

“We take it back, butcher it, but the meat is ruined. Shot all through it. It’s my fault; I accept that. My father beats the shit out of me. Merciless. He beats the shit out of Abram, just for being there. He was like that. Even if you did everything right, he’d find a reason. No control.” Viggo drinks deep. “But I did learn. I learned to shoot. I learned responsibility. And I learned what I was capable of. So when it came time to get rid of the old son-of-a-bitch, I knew what I was doing. Gut-shot him. That time, on purpose. So it was not a total loss, that trip.”

It’s the most Viggo’s said in days. Avi can’t relate to a word of it.

“Why do you ask?” Viggo says after a moment.

“I was gonna ask if you wanted to try hunting,” Avi says. “But, uh, I guess not.”

Viggo doesn’t speak again.

* * *

“Storm on the way,” Viggo calls as Avi slams the cabin door shut.

Avi doesn’t answer, just sinks to the floor and starts tearing at his boots with frozen fingers.

“Said there’s a storm coming,” Viggo repeats. He’s on the wrong side of drunk; Avi can tell right away. There’s a sway to him, a roughness. Nothing good is going to happen. “You shouldn’t be out so late.”

 _It's fucking noon_. Avi finally gets his foot loose from the boot, practically throws it across the room. “What’re you now, Viggo, a fucking weatherman?” Avi pulls viciously at his own coat.

Viggo, meanwhile, has gone very still. “Bad day at the office, perhaps?”

Avi gives up on the parka. He storms across the cabin to the kitchen, pours a glass of water, and returns to slam it on the table in front of Viggo. “Drink that. Sober up. I need to talk to the real you right fucking now.”

Viggo eyes the glass of water with disdain before taking a long sip directly from the vodka bottle. “Sit down, Avi.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Suit yourself.” His voice, still wobbly with drink, takes on a cool, professional quality. “What’s troubling you, Avi?”

“What’s troubling me? Let me tell you, Viggo. Let me…” he struggles again with the parka and finally gets it to unzip. He lets his coat drop to the kitchen floor. “I had a couple of bad fucking phone calls today. First, I call our old pal Aurelio - you remember Aurelio?”

Viggo eyes him balefully, refusing to play along.

“I try to collect on some kickback money he owes us, and Aurelio says we’re not getting kickbacks from him anymore, and I say 'Let's see what my guys have to say about that,' and he says my guys can’t do shit about it because most of 'em are still scraping their brains off the floor at The Red Circle. And he’s fucking right.

“Then I call that kid Alexei, ‘cause he’s hot shit these days doing real-ass High Table work overseas. Kid worshiped the ground you walked on; he would’ve killed John Wick for free a year and a half ago. He won’t touch the job for three million. Told me to lose his number. You fucking _made_ him and he..." Avi runs out of words, just breathes until he can find a way forward.

“And now - _now_ \- I’m not hearing shit from Ivan. Not a phone call. Not a text. I can’t even track him down. This son of a bitch dropped off the edge of the map. And that means - best case scenario - this piece of shit got hit by a bus and our secret dies with him. Worst case scenario, he’s selling us out to the highest bidder. Or maybe, just maybe, he’s quitting his fucking job because if nobody else is scared of us, why the _fuck should Ivan be?_ We should’ve…” he runs his hands down his face. “We should’ve killed those guys. I shouldn’t have used unvetted people for that job. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. We should’ve killed ‘em.”

A thin trail of smoke escapes from Viggo’s lips. “Who the fuck is _we_?” he asks. “You don’t kill anybody. You got...fucking…” He grabs Avi’s wrist, strokes their palms together. Avi gets it. Soft, unmarred hands. Not Viggo’s calloused, scarred hands.

Avi yanks his arm out of Viggo’s grip. “ _You_ should have killed them,” he specifies.

Viggo drops his spent cigarette into Avi’s water glass, takes a new cigarette from his shirt pocket, puts it between his lips, and lights it. He takes a careful drag. He asks, “What do you want me to do for you, Avi?”

“Something. Anything. I’m fucking drowning here, Viggo. I’m trying to find anything we can use to get us out of this fucking disaster. I _need_ you, Viggo. I need you to be fucking ruthless. I need you to help me get our city back.”

“Avi,” he says, very patiently. “Have you not yet realized that this man is gone? That the city is no longer ours?”

 _No._ “No,” Avi whispers. “Viggo, I know you’re in a bad place right now. OK? I get that. I get that Iosef is dead and we’re on the ropes, and nobody’s on their A-game right now, but you need to get it together…”

“Do not tell me,” Viggo interrupts, voice too cold and dangerously quiet, “what I need. And do not speak to me about my son.”

“Yeah? Well, what the fuck can I speak to you about?” His voice is thin and ragged. “You don’t talk to me, Viggo. You’re not fucking here. I can’t do this on my own and I need your goddamn help and you’re...we’re supposed to be a fucking team.”

Viggo sits perfectly still, perfectly silent. He’s giving Avi a look that could slice through bone. 

It just pisses Avi off more.

“You know what?” Avi snatches his coat up off the floor and puts it on again. “That’s fine. That’s just fucking fine. If you want to lie down and wait for John Wick to come here and kill you, that’s on you, Viggo.” Stalking across the room, he finds his boots and wedges them back onto his feet. “If that’s what you’ve decided you deserve, I can’t change your mind. Make it real easy for him. What the fuck do I care? But I’m getting us out of this, with or without you.” He wrenches the door open, nearly gets hit in the face when a gust of wind pushes it harder than he expects.

From behind him, Viggo says, “Avi.”

Avi slams the door.

There on the doorstep, his temper cools slightly. Avi takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it loose as a thick white cloud. It’s only noon. The warmest hours of the day are ahead of him. There’s still time to work. Avi can’t let this be all he’s done today; he just can’t.

If Avi doesn’t get them out of this, no one will. He’s on his own.


	5. Chapter 5

Inside the hunter’s blind, Avi blows on his fingertips, trying to keep them warm.

It’s hard to get work done like this, when his computer is a phone with a limited battery. When his office is a shitty treehouse. When there’s a real risk of freezing to death. He can’t be certain that they’d be doing better if they were someplace more civilized, but he’d definitely be warmer.

It’s bad. Not the worst, but bad.

The men who are left alive have flocked to Abram, and there are _few_ of them. They can’t all be dead, but Avi’s willing to bet that some of those survivors know exactly which way the wind is blowing. The others will too, soon enough. 

Avi moved a little money around - an account here, a property there - and at this point, they’re what Avi would call comfortable. But you need more than comfortable to hire an assassin to go after John Wick these days. You need High Table money. Avi’s not there yet. Avi’s _never_ been there.

One of Avi’s contacts said to him in hushed tones, “Listen, Avi, you’re a good guy. But you’re not worth my head.” And that was the end of that conversation. 

If it keeps up like this, they’ll be as good as _excommunicado_. Worst case scenario. They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.

Avi’s more worried about the fact that Yuri’s not answering his calls now. _Definitely should’ve killed those guys._

Avi blows on his hands again. 

It won’t be this bad forever, he knows. Their world is always changing and John Wick is getting older. One day, there’ll be a crop of young assassins, all looking to make a name for themselves as the one who killed John Wick. One day, one of them will succeed. 

Avi’s just not sure he can make it that long.

He puts his gloves back on and climbs out of the blind and onto the ladder. An icy wind whips around him, sends his coat flapping in the breeze. _Storm is coming_ , Avi thinks to himself, clutching grimly at the plank of wood. Sky is gray. Snowflakes swirling in the air. No question. He’d better hurry back.

He takes it slow and steady, eyes on his hands, never making a move unless he’s certain of his footing. Because no matter how many times he’s been up and down this tree, Avi will never trust the construction.

 _This fucking thing_ , he thinks at the exact moment when he puts his weight on a plank and the rotten wood shudders and crumbles, _is a death trap._

And then he drops.

* * *

He wakes with a throbbing head and snow in his ear. Avi groans, tries to roll over, is met with an excruciating pain, like lightning up and down his arm.

The screaming makes his head hurt, so he stops after a while. He waits until the pain becomes a hum.

Avi takes inventory.

He’s lying in the snow, on his side in a drift. The sky is gray-gold, what passes for a sunset here. The snow comes dry and powdery, swirling over the drifts like little ghosts. It’ll pile up soon, and fast. 

Gingerly, Avi tries moving again.

Doesn’t work.

It seems that, like an idiot, he tried to break his fall with his hand, so that’s...that’s a write-off. The whole right arm. It’s not helping him now. Forget about it. Something seems to be wrong with his right ankle, too. Fell on it funny, maybe. He hit his head, he thinks. He thinks that because there’s a little blood on the snow, just by his eye.

Left arm? He moves it experimentally. It aches - all of him aches - but it seems to move just fine. Avi gropes around in his pocket for the phone, feels a sudden rush of relief when his fingers graze it, a sudden crash of disappointment when he realizes there’s no one to call.

What he needs is for Viggo to realize he’s been gone too long and come looking for him before it’s too late.

That won’t happen.

What he needs is for his screams to break through Viggo’s drunken stupor and bring him out into the woods to help.

Avi calls out. The wind seems to swallow his screams up. And it’s a long, long way to the cabin.

What he needs is to get himself back to the cabin. No matter what it takes. 

Avi shifts himself as carefully as he can, leaning heavy on that good left arm until he can get his knees under him. His right arm dangles, loose and awful. _Don’t worry about that now_ , he thinks. _Just put one foot in front of the other._ Avi struggles from his knees to his feet, all his weight on his left leg. Time to see how the right is doing. He takes a step.

He drops again.

* * *

It’s dark now. At some point, it got dark.

He had the brains to fall on his left side this time, so all his good limbs are under him. Easier to get up that way.

Avi’s not so ambitious this time. Right ankle’s no good, right arm’s no good. But knees are OK, so Avi figures that’s his best bet. Not as good as it’d be if the snow wasn’t so deep but...but goddammit it’s something. It’s something. He uses his left arm to take some of the weight and he can move himself, bit by bit.

It’s a lot of work for very little distance. Avi can tell, even through the haze of pain. But it’s movement. It’s warmth. It’s better than sitting still, freezing to death. He keeps going.

He manages about a quarter of a mile before his bad ankle gets tugged by a buried tree root and it’s all too excruciating. He finds a tree to shield him from the wind, turns his collar up, gathers his thoughts.

He rests for a while.

* * *

He’s impressed with this parka, if nothing else. He’s not cold anymore. In fact, he’s sweating. He could stand to lose the coat.

 _But something,_ Avi thinks, as the snow builds up around him, as his eyelashes begin to freeze, _tells me that’s a bad idea._

He tries getting to his knees again, can’t quite move, can’t really do much other than tremble.

Avi scans the woods before him, hoping for...he doesn’t know. Something. Viggo, coming to find him. Yuri or Ivan, back from creating the false trail. The lights from the cabin. Something.

What he sees is a deer, moving silently between the trees. A big deer, gray-white, wearing its antlers like a crown. It regards him for a moment, silent and impassive. And then it’s gone, vanished into the whiteout.

He does not drop so much as sink.


	6. Chapter 6

He wakes to a horrible scream, to cold pain racing up and down his right arm.

 _“ Jesus fucking Christ ,”_ Viggo snaps, disgusted. “Not that arm. I got it.”

Avi opens his eyes with some difficulty. He thinks his eyelids might’ve frozen shut. 

He’s outside, still. It’s dark, still. The storm howls around him, so loud he can’t believe he slept through it. And Viggo’s here. Viggo is kneeling in the snow, right in front of him. Viggo’s taking Avi’s face in his gloved hands.

 _“ Aviiii ,”_ Viggo murmurs, patting Avi’s frozen cheek. “You awake? You with me?”

Avi opens his mouth. Can’t speak. Weakly, he nods.

“Good,” Viggo says, although his mouth is set in a frown. “That’s good. Can you walk?”

Avi shakes his head. “Right ankle’s fucked up,” he manages. “Right arm’s fucked up.”

Viggo taps him on the forehead. “Yes. Your head is fucked up too. You decided to go out? In this?”

 _It was nicer before,_ Avi tries to say. He can’t manage it. 

Viggo sighs deep and a wave of boozy breath washes over Avi’s face. Still drunk. Great.

“OK,” Viggo says, rubbing his hands together. “I'm going to carry you. Bad side hangs, good side helps hold on. Understand?”

He doesn’t wait for Avi to respond, just bends low and grabs Avi by the left arm, around the left leg, and rolls Avi onto his back. He struggles there for a moment, under him. Shifting weight, shifting muscles. And then Viggo takes one step.

And another.

And another.

Avi’s not sure how Viggo even knows where they’re going until he sees the rope attached to Viggo’s belt, stretching away into the whiteout ahead of them. He didn’t know Viggo could lift him. He’s not sure how any of this is happening.

His face is close to Viggo’s ear, so he asks over the howl of the wind, “Did you hear me call for help?”

“No,” Viggo says, pausing to adjust his grip on Avi. “I haven’t heard you call for help once in all the time I’ve been looking for you. You gave up _very_ quickly. For an optimist.”

Avi shudders, just tries to be an easy thing to carry.

* * *

When Avi wakes up, his skin is on fire. He’s lying in bed and his skin is on fire and for some reason, Viggo is tearing at his shoelaces. He’s also not very sympathetic.

“You complain _so much_ ,” Viggo snarls as he throws Avi’s boot to the ground and grips his foot tightly, painfully. 

“It fucking hurts.”

“ _Frostbite_ hurts,” Viggo says, tearing off the other boot. “You’re very lucky.”

“I’m a lot of things right now and lucky isn’t one of them.”

Viggo unzips Avi’s parka, throws it open, frowns. “I want to take a look at your shoulder,” he says. He plucks at Avi’s shirt. “You don’t care about this?”

Through gritted teeth: “Not right now.”

Viggo pulls out a pocket knife. “Very wise.” He slices through the collar of the shirt, down the shoulder as far as he can without cutting into Avi’s coat. He peels back the torn shirt, gingerly. “This may save you some pain,” Viggo murmurs, exploring gently with his fingers. 

“Do it,” Avi hisses between his teeth. “Just do it.”

He digs his fingers into Avi’s upper arm, rotates it in its socket. “Need to see...ah,” Viggo says over the screams. “That’s good.”

_“Fuck you!”_

“No, sh, shh,” Viggo murmurs to him, getting a tight grip on Avi’s upper arm. “It’s only dislocated. See?”

He pushes, twists.

The world goes black.

* * *

Someone slaps Avi across the face.

“Ow!” He tries to roll away from his assailant but he’s being pinned by a warm, heavy weight. “What the _fuck_...”

“Oh, good,” Viggo says, a heavy weight on Avi’s body. “You can wake up.”

Avi cautiously lets his eyes flutter open.

Viggo’s peering down at him, blue-eyed, tousled. Genuine worry creases his face.

Avi takes a deep breath, lets himself be pushed into the mattress by Viggo's weight. “Is the head wound that bad?” he asks. His mouth is dry.

“Hard to say,” Viggo says, letting his fingers graze across Avi’s forehead. “Sometimes, the guy appears to be fine, but he never wakes up again. Sometimes, he bleeds all over the fucking place but he's fine the next day. You...” Viggo shrugs. “People don’t hit you very often. I don’t know.”

Avi lets his head flop back onto the pillow. “Nobody hit me. I fell.”

Viggo’s testing fingers wander down to Avi’s shoulder, gently poking and prodding. “Still hurts?”

“Ow. Yeah.”

“But not as much.”

“No.”

“Good.” Viggo cradles Avi’s head in his palm. “You can sleep, if you need to.”

He does.

  
  


* * *

Awake again. Strong smell of weed.

Avi’s on his back, staring at the ceiling. A plume of smoke drifts across his field of view. The rafters are closer than he expects.

“Are we in the loft?” he asks aloud.

“Mhm.” The rustle of pages turning.

Avi turns to see Viggo sitting beside him in bed, shirt off, joint in one hand, trashy novel in the other. Lamplight casts a glare on his reading glasses. 

Avi’s thinking about logistics, thinking about the letters inked below Viggo’s collarbone. “You carried me up the stairs?”

Viggo exhales, peers down at him. He says, “The bed up here is bigger,” like that’s all the explanation Avi needs.

Avi guesses it is. He has new questions now. “Where’d you get weed?”

Viggo shrugs. “I brought it from home.”

“You been holding out on me?”

“I have willpower,” Viggo protests. “I was saving it for an emergency.”

Avi guesses this qualifies.

“I am also generous,” Viggo says, passing him the joint.

There’s a tacky smear of blood across his wrist. Avi’s blood. Probably.

Avi holds it between trembling, pale fingers and puffs at it almost compulsively, until he feels himself going at once lighter and softer. Avi relaxes by a degree.

“Better?” Viggo asks as he plucks the joint from Avi’s nerveless fingers. 

He’s not feeling good, exactly, but the edge of his pain is sanded down and smoothed out. “Yeah,” he whispers.

Avi watches as Viggo turns to the bedside table to trade in the joint for a glass of water. He watches the muscles twist and bunch under the tattoo of a candle set in a human skull in the center of Viggo’s back, under the tattoo of a snarling dog on his ribs. Avi’s seen them before, of course, but he’s never had the license and the opportunity to stare.

Viggo gives him water a little bit at a time, until his mouth is not so dry and his headache starts to ebb. 

“What now?” Avi asks.

“Still cold?”

 _Is he?_ Avi feels like he’s lost control of the barometer that tells him that kind of thing. From one second to the next, he’s on fire, he’s freezing to death, he’s fine. His hand is shaking. That’s gotta mean something.

Viggo rests his hand on Avi’s forehead, considers. “I suppose you would advise overcaution.”

He shoves at Avi, rolls him so all his weight is resting on his good side. Then Viggo tucks in behind him, bare chest pressed to Avi’s bare back, thick arm holding him still.

“What?” Avi asks.

“Don’t complain,” Viggo murmurs in his ear. “This is why you didn’t freeze to death.”

The realization that Viggo’s been holding him while he slept, pressing his warmth into Avi’s back is...curious. Bizarre. Perversely exciting, if Avi’s honest. “Then I guess I should thank you,” he says at last.

“Don’t strain yourself.” Viggo thumps the paperback onto the pillow in front of Avi’s face. “Will it trouble you if I read?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Viggo settles over him, around him. “Could read out loud,” he suggests, “if you prefer.”

“I’m not gonna understand any of it,” Avi says as his eyes drift shut. And then, “Fuck it. Yeah. I’d like that.”

He drifts off to the rise and fall of Viggo’s low voice, to the rumble in his chest. It doesn’t take very long.


	7. Chapter 7

Avi wakes up because the light is comfortably bright, and for a moment he imagines it’s a cloudless day in New York City and he’s in his climate-controlled apartment, waking up to mid-morning sunlight blazing through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

He’s in the shithole cabin, lying in Viggo’s bed, tucked away under what appears to be an entire bear. The cabin is filled with blinding light, presumably reflected off the snow. There’s the faint, not-unpleasant clatter of activity in the kitchen. 

He’d be pissed off, but when the alternative is freezing to death alone in the woods, he can’t help but be grateful.

Avi sits up experimentally. The room spins, just a little, but holds steady. His arm and shoulder still hurt, but it’s the kind of ache that he can manage. He swings his legs out of bed, discovers that his right ankle is bruised and tightly bandaged, but looks alright. And he still has all of his toes, which is a nice surprise.

He's also down to his underwear, which he opts not to think about too hard.

He tries standing up very carefully, holding tight to the nightstand with his good arm in case his legs give out beneath him. He’s weak, he’s shivering, and it doesn’t feel too good to stand on his right foot, but he’s in one piece.

Painfully, he shuffles to the edge of the loft.

He looks down to see Viggo swearing over a stove. He has his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder, a cigarette clenched in his teeth. In the pan, fried eggs hiss and spit at him.

Sensing that he’s being watched, Viggo pauses in his mis-management of the eggs and glances up to look at Avi. “The fuck are you doing out of bed?” he growls.

“That’s it? No good morning?”

“I just stuck you back together again. If you fuck up my work, it won’t be a good morning.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’ll come up to you,” he calls after Avi as he limps back to bed. “As soon as I... _fucking eggs_ …”

Avi slumps hard in bed, breathes a sigh of relief. “When did you become a doctor, anyway?”

“Long time ago. When you can’t go to a doctor,” Viggo calls up, “or when you can’t scrape up the money, you become a doctor. You learn how to fix yourself. More or less.” He can hear Viggo’s heavy tread on the stairs up to the loft. “That’s how it was back then. I got to be pretty fucking good. Now, if you got stabbed in the gut, or you _really_ got hit in the head, then you’d be shit out of luck. The most I could do for you then would be to fill you up with liquor and painkillers and wait for you to die.” He finally appears at the top of the stairs, carrying a tray. “Breakfast?”

Avi’s not sure what to say. They have breakfast.

The eggs aren’t great. They’re a little burned on the bottom, a little runny in the middle. They’re pretty good, under the circumstances.

“I’m out of touch,” Viggo admits, as he leans in to examine the purple-black bruise on Avi’s shoulder. “It’s been a very long time since I cooked for myself. And that stove does not help.”

“Right? It’s terrible. _Ow._ ”

“Should be OK,” Viggo murmurs, still prodding gently at the joint. “Keep it in a sling for a while. It’ll heal.”

He’s sober, Avi realizes, for the first time since they got there. “Good.”

“You hurt very easily,” Viggo remarks, eating the last crust of toast from Avi’s plate. “Little dislocated shoulder, sprained ankle, bump your head, and you’re asleep for two days. When I was 20, that would've been a night out.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m way past 20.” Avi rakes his hand back through his hair. He’s struck all of a sudden by how close together they are. “What made you come after me?”

Viggo exhales, shifts on the bed. “I was not going to at first,” he admits. “It was broad daylight and you are not stupid. And you needed time alone. I thought, _Leave him be. Let him cool his heels. Let’s have another drink._ ”

Viggo rubs his hands together.

“I had a few,” he says at last. “And then I realized it had gotten dark, at some point, and it was snowing very hard. And I knew that you would not choose to stay outside in this unless something was very wrong.”

“You found the blind on the maps, I guess,” Avi says.

Viggo shakes his head. “No need. I had been there before.”

He’s never been there. Avi would’ve remembered if Viggo wanted to come out to the blind with him. Avi would’ve been fucking overjoyed if Viggo showed interest in anything he was doing out there. _“ When? ”_

“While you are there. Time to time.” Viggo shrugs his shoulders. “I walk underneath, to make sure you are still alive. Not that day, obviously.”

“No, obviously.”

Viggo waves a hand. “You’re up there, making your calls. I trust you to handle my business, look out for my interests. You need time alone, so you do not kill me. I understand.”

“I don’t…”

He does.

“It’s a small cabin,” Viggo points out.

It is.

“And I have been…” He hesitates, lets his hand rest on Avi’s bare shin. “Difficult to live with.”

He has. Avi’s heart thuds. Viggo’s hand is rough, warm. “I never expected you to be the same guy you’ve always been,” Avi offers. “Not after...what happened. I knew you’d have a hard time. I’m just not, ah, equipped. To help with that.”

Viggo nods to show he knows, to show he’s not equipped either. “I found a ball of twine in the cellar, and I tied it to the front door so I could find my way back. And then I went out. To your office.” Viggo lets his hand roam absently up and down Avi’s leg. “You were gone, nothing left but the broken step and the trail you made. I followed your trail. You were going the wrong way, do you know this?” 

Avi shakes his head.

“You were not hard to follow, dragging yourself through the snow like that. But if you had kept going the way you were, you would not have reached the cabin. This is not to shame you. I don’t know how you would have known the way.” Viggo coughs, once. “And then I found you, sleeping frozen under a tree. And I woke you up. You know the rest.” 

“I owe you,” Avi hears himself say.

Viggo shakes his head.

“I do. I was a real fuckin’ piece of shit to you before I left. You were in no condition to be running around in a whiteout. You could’ve left me out there. I owe you.”

“There was never a choice,” Viggo says, a little too loudly. He clears his throat. He continues, very softly. “You are the only one I have left. I could do nothing else but bring you home.”

The cabin falls quiet.

“Protect you,” he continues, cautiously, “as you have protected me in these dark days. I just needed you to have a problem I could fix.”

He pats Avi gently on the shin and rises from the bed. “I’m going to see if I can make you a sling,” he says. “Or a crutch, maybe. See if we can move you to the first floor. So I don’t need to carry you downstairs every time you have to take a piss.”

And just like that, he’s gone.

Avi sits up, thinking, for a long while.

* * *

Viggo never gets around to moving him out of the loft. Viggo sits on Avi’s bed on the ground floor only once before declaring the move unnecessary and Avi’s good enough on the crutch that Viggo hasn’t needed to carry him anywhere. It’s easier for them to be together in the loft. More comfortable. 

“I never told you what I learned that night,” Avi says suddenly. “Up in the blind.”

Viggo - who has officially switched from drinking to smoking - is refilling Avi’s water glass. He scoffs, lets loose a puff of smoke. “You gave me one report that day already. And by then, you had nearly died. My priorities were elsewhere.” He adjusts the pillows under Avi’s back for emphasis.

“Well, I almost died for this shit, so. Sit down. Humor me.” Avi pats the covers beside him.

Reluctantly, Viggo sits down on the edge of the bed, his lower back resting against Avi’s thigh. “Tell me.”

Avi tells him. “Abram took a few of our leftover guys under his wing. Just a few. The rest are either dead or in the wind. People are scared to work with us. We have money, but not enough to convince any working assassin to go after Wick. And Yuri’s not checking in either. It, um, it sounds bad. I know.”

Viggo rumbles thoughtfully. “It does sound bad.”

“But it doesn’t _have_ to be. We just have to wait this out. There’ll be new blood ready to take on John Wick for a cool million in...what, six months? A year?”

“Avi,” Viggo sighs.

“And from what I’m hearing, Wick’s not even looking for us right now; he got himself mixed up in some crazy fucking High Table business. Pissed a lot of people off. This problem might solve itself.”

“ _Avi._ ”

“We can be back on top again. We can start over. We just have to wait for the right opportunity.”

“Avi, Avi, Avi,” Viggo murmurs, taking him by the wrists until finally Avi falls silent. “Listen to me.”

Avi waits, worry rising in his gut.

Viggo closes his eyes for a moment, considers. “I am so fucking tired,” he says at last. “I have been fighting for as long as I’ve been alive over scraps. Clawing and crawling for _inches_ of territory, for _nothing_ _._ I had nothing and from this I built an empire.” He adjusts his grip on Avi, holds him firmly, closely. _“ We_ built an empire, you and I. And I do not have the strength to build another.”

The words hit him like a punch to the gut. “You’re really giving up?”

 _“ Giving up ,"_ Viggo repeats derisively. “How is it that when I told you months ago that I wanted to plan for my retirement, you came to me with plans and recommendations and strategies, but when I tell you now that I would like to live out my days in peace, you act as though I’ve betrayed you?”

“A few months ago, we were on top,” Avi snaps. He struggles, can’t quite break Viggo’s grip. It’s strong on his good arm, tender on his bad one. “I could stand to go out on top.”

“This is all your ego, then? And to think I believed you were fond of me.” Viggo smiles weakly. “I am teasing you, of course. This was my ego too. But I have attained...clarity. Of a kind. In part, I built this empire to vouchsafe the future of my son. My legacy. And then I lost all I had built, because the son I raised was foolish and arrogant.”

It’s the first time Viggo has spoken about Iosef willingly since they arrived. His gaze is steely and very far away. His voice holds steady.

“From where I now stand, I see all that I have lost, but also that which is left to me. What is important and what is not.” His thumb pushes against the inside of Avi’s wrist. “You understand?”

He does and he doesn’t. “Everything we did, it _was_ important,” Avi insists.

“It _was_ ,” Viggo agrees. “But this is lost to us now. We cannot have it again. Not in the same form.” His next breath shudders, a shaky almost-laugh. “I know that this is not what you expected of me.”

“You’re goddamn right, it isn’t.” Avi’s trying to be furious with him, but he can’t find that anger he had when he walked off into the coming storm. Just another thing he’s lost, maybe.

“And I know that you have worked hard these past weeks to...to rebuild what we once had. And I know that this is not what you wanted.” He sighs, a thin trail of smoke. “I would offer you freedom from any obligation you still had to me, but I acknowledge that any freedom I can give you is worth very little right now.”

Avi surprises himself with a laugh, small and raw. “Yeah. Kinda think if I put my CV out there, Wick would show up before anyone looking to hire me.” 

“Separation is not...not what I want. But if you wished to part ways, I would provide you with the funds to do so.”

“Sure. I guess we could draw a line down the cabin and fucking...pick a side.”

“I offer this out of respect,” Viggo insists, still painfully sincere. “Because you are loyal and clever and because I care for you. And not because I do not need you. Or want you. Here.”

Avi can hear his own heartbeat in his ears. “What do you want to do, Viggo?”

“For the two of us to remain here. For now, anyway. Perhaps John Wick _will_ be killed,” Viggo says, in the tones of a man acknowledging the remotest possibility, “or perhaps he will be too beset with new troubles to seek us out immediately. We have money?”

Slowly, Avi nods. With the assets available to them, funding an organization like the one they used to have would be a slow, scraping process. For just two people... “For just two people, we’re...we’re good. We’re more than good.”

“Then we may go very far. Wherever we wish.”

There’s a lightness to Avi, then. Not a lightness of mood, but the sensation of being unmoored, of gravity being turned way, way down. What would they be then? Just people. Just two guys.

Viggo thumps him gently on the shoulder. “Not the retirement you imagined, hm?”

Avi laughs, breathlessly. “No.”

“What _did_ you imagine? You never said.”

Avi doesn’t fantasize about not working. He’s aware that he can’t keep working forever. The end will come, someday. But up until right now, that end seemed as likely to come in the form of jail time or a bullet as a retirement party. Avi never preoccupied himself with the idea. “Jesus. Um. I set money aside. A lot of it. And I looked into buying property in countries that don’t extradite to the U.S. Just seemed smart, you know?” 

Viggo nods sagely.

“But, uh, I guess I never really settled on any one place. I planned to stay in New York for as long as I could. Keep working for you, as much as you needed me to. Make sure Iosef was looked after. And then, when I got too fuckin’ old, I’d...well, retire. Do whatever I wanted to do.” Avi rubs his hands together. “I never wasted too much time thinking about it. My work excites me. I like working for you.” 

Viggo’s peering at him very, very thoughtfully.

_“What?”_

He exhales very slowly. “Well, perhaps it is presumptuous. But it occurs to me now that I have been assuming that if I were to retire, you would come with me.”

There's a ringing in Avi's ears. “I. Where? To do what?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. Whatever you wished. As my lawyer, my right hand, my companion. I don't care." He takes Avi by the upper arms, firmly, gently. "I decided long ago that if your presence at my side had a price, I would pay it.” 

Avi looks hard at Viggo for the first time in a while, really looks at him. Very carefully, Avi tries to separate the man from the institution. Without it, Viggo's power rests in his arms, in his broad shoulders. He's just a guy, strong and marked by life, with tired eyes and a shirking hairline and creases on his forehead and blue-black, blurring tattoos creeping out the sleeves of his shirt. Avi says, “I don’t want you to pay anything.”

“What do you want, Avi?”

And then one of them closes the gap. 

It's Avi. No use denying it this time. 

He seizes Viggo by his shirtfront and drags him close, holds him still so he can’t escape while Avi kisses like he means to devour.

Viggo’s not trying to escape. Viggo’s holding Avi tight around the waist, grabbing Avi’s thigh for leverage, and dragging him into Viggo’s lap.

They’re doing this. 

“Why didn’t you say something?” Avi pants between kisses, between bites. “Why did we only do this once?”

“It was...a complication,” Viggo gasps as he pushes Avi to lie back on the bed. “Messy. Unwise. A mistake. I could see you knew it too.”

“Of course it was a mistake,” Avi snaps, exasperated, as he struggles to undo Viggo’s shirt buttons one-handed. “Who the fuck cares? You could have _made me_. You could’ve made me do anything you wanted.”

Viggo takes him by the wrist, gently pins it back on the pillows, makes Avi groan with impatience. “I didn’t want to make you. You were too important. I could get sex from anyone.” He pokes Avi hard in the chest until he lies perfectly flat. “I _needed_ you.”

“Oh fuck,” Avi whispers as Viggo settles on top of him. “Oh fuck.”

Every time Avi has Viggo Tarasov at his mercy, he’s got one hand tied behind his back. There’s no fucking justice in the world. Although, he finds as Viggo’s beard rasps against his throat and as his heavy hand strokes through the front of Avi’s underwear, there are occasionally small rewards.


	8. Chapter 8

Viggo lights two cigarettes, passes one to Avi. “Your shoulder is OK?”

“Yeah,” Avi says, taking the cigarette in his mouth as he adjusts his sling. “I’m fine.”

Avi _is_ fine, amazingly. He keeps waiting for the downside, the twist. The complication. Reality will set in. They’ll recoil from each other. They’ll pretend it never happened. In three, two, one…

Viggo’s hand falls heavy on Avi’s knee, grips him tight. “You will tell me if it hurts.”

“Yeah. Of course.” He permits himself to lean into Viggo, just a little. Viggo leans into him in return. “What about you? You still in one piece?”

“I am.” 

“Good. We’re off to a good start.”

Their bare legs brush together beneath the blanket. They smoke in comfortable silence. It’s strangely accessible. They’ve done this a thousand times before. This is no different.

Viggo’s staring contemplatively at the smoke that curls up and into the rafters. “I feel I should apologize.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Avi answers, a little too quickly.

“Not for this,” Viggo says, patting Avi’s hand. “For my behavior these past weeks. I have been...very difficult to live with, and I fear that I have brought you pain.”

“You...you still shouldn’t apologize. I told you before that I didn’t expect you to be any other way. After what happened.”

“You grew to resent me, I think.”

“No." Avi's surprised to discover he means it. "I kinda thought I did, but now I think I might’ve also been...dealing with it. With what happened.”

“With Iosef.”

“Yeah.” Avi shifts beside him in bed. “Yeah, with Iosef. He was…” _He was a good kid_ would be the kindly lie Avi would tell someone he respected less. _He was a good kid and he didn’t deserve what happened to him._ Except Iosef wasn’t a good kid. He wasn’t a bad seed either; he was just this angry, mean, under-parented, over-beaten, stupid, entitled kid. But that’s not the kind of thing you tell a grieving father.

Hell, Avi can barely bring himself to think it.

“I just spent so much time worrying about him,” Avi says at last. 

Viggo grips his good arm tight.

“And I know you did too.”

Some of their first real conversations were about Iosef: about Viggo’s young son who had no respect for tradition and no self-control. Who Viggo loved painfully, through gritted teeth.

Viggo breathes out, deep and shuddering. “I failed him, Avi. I raised him to have no appreciation for his great fortune and no respect for anyone. And then I sold him. To save my own skin.”

“You loved him.”

Avi’s not under any illusions. He’s seen Viggo beat the shit out of his son. He’s also watched Viggo fight desperately to build a future for Iosef, to give him all the opportunities that Viggo never had. He used violence for that too.

“He was supposed to have a mother. Someone with the time to look after him. Someone who knew how.” Viggo sighs. “It's very difficult to discipline your son for starting fights when you yourself have just beaten a man to death.”

Avi can’t quite relate, but, “I can see where that would cause problems,” he says.

“This life of ours,” Viggo murmurs. His rough palm runs up and down Avi’s arm. “It doesn’t teach you to take care of other people.” Suddenly, he says, “You were good with him.”

“I was?” Avi never thought so.

“You looked after him. Although I hired you to do this, so perhaps it is not a virtue.” He lays his head on Avi’s shoulder, nestles against his throat. ”But when you did this, you spoke to him like a grown man. Made him feel important. I believe he admired you very much. I looked to you for guidance in everything else. If I were wiser, I would have looked to you for guidance with Iosef as well.”

“You did do that. We talked about him all the time.” He admits after a moment, “I don’t know how much I helped.”

Viggo murmurs sleepy, unintelligible Russian into Avi’s shoulder.

“Didn’t catch that, Viggo.”

He clears his throat. “‘Even now,’” he repeats, “‘my son is driving us insane.’”

It’s one of those things that isn’t quite funny, but they laugh all the same.

* * *

From the start, Avi’s been keenly aware of their potential to bore one another.

It occurred to him that first morning they woke up together, and he’s thought of it every morning since. They fill their days with mundane tasks: the preparation of food, the care and repair of the cabin, brisk walks around the grounds of the preserve. The pile of unread trashy novels decreases day by day. The number of them that Avi can read is still solidly at zero, although Viggo has taken to translating on a case by case basis. They ration out the alcohol for caution’s sake, the cigarettes for scarcity. 

They sleep together. No rations on that.

It’s not unpleasant, their little life. Alright for simple, unambitious folk. But Avi and Viggo are strategists and fighters. They take what they want. They devour it. This life, like everything else, will become too thin and meager for them one day. One day, they will wake up, look at each other, and see a trap. They’ll be sick of each other.

Somehow, it hasn’t happened yet. 

They build a new hunter’s blind. Or, Viggo does. Avi watches mostly. But he calls it “managing” and he keeps track of the wood and nails, so Viggo doesn’t seem to mind. He builds it in a strong tree with thick branches, and he waterproofs the wood. No roof, just a platform, but it suits Avi’s needs. By the time he’s ready to take his arm out of the sling, the blind is done. 

Viggo comes up with him that first day. “To test it,” he says. “For company,” he admits. Viggo talks to Abram on the phone that day for the first time since they left New York. Avi doesn’t understand a word of it, but it sounds kind of intense.

He thinks it goes well, though.

Viggo climbs down after that and it’s Avi’s office from that point on. From there, he watches over the outside world. Abram’s chop shop: finally repaired and steadily growing. The Bowery King: filling the power void they left behind. John Wick: up to something crazy. In Morocco? So they say.

If they wanted to make a break for it, Avi thinks to himself, now might be the time. Now, while Wick’s occupied. Not as safe as when Wick’s dead, but Avi’s beginning to come around to Viggo’s way of thinking.

Anyway, they’re not ready to leave yet. Viggo has a new project now that the hunters’ blind is done, and it requires the privacy that their new home provides. 

“It amazes me, Avi,” Viggo says as the ringing in Avi’s ears subsides, “that you can practice this as often as you do and still flinch with every shot.”

“It’s _loud_ ,” Avi protests, lying on his belly in the snow with the butt of the hunting rifle pressed against his shoulder. “Anyway, I get results.”

Viggo’s squinting at the targets: tin cans and empty vodka bottles, some lying dented or in shards on the ground, some still standing tall on the log they’re balanced on. “These are results?”

“I’m better than I was the first time.”

Viggo considers that first, untouched row of targets. “This is true,” he concedes. He lowers himself to the ground and drapes himself over Avi, chest pressed against his back, hands over Avi’s hands to adjust his grip.

“As you know, it is very difficult to control something of which you are frightened,” Viggo murmurs as he guides Avi’s aim. “Not to say be arrogant, because the gun you hold is deadly. But it requires your focus. Respect. A firm hand.”

Viggo’s finger brushes against Avi’s. In the distance, a vodka bottle explodes in a shower of glass. 

Viggo breathes, “Then there is no need to be frightened at all.”

They hike back to the cabin and light a fire in the grate. They fuck there on the floor, before the warming glow of that fire, raw and fast and frantic but with an ease that still baffles Avi. They lay there a while, basking in it, before one of them decides to shower and the other decides they need to eat and together, by turns, they become civilized men for the evening. They dress. They eat dinner. Avi makes lists of supplies to order while listening to Viggo’s voice rise and fall with the rhythms of a book. To his disgust, Avi understands more words than he did the day before.

They mount the stairs to the loft and fall into bed together; this time, less frantic and more forgiving. Often, they talk after. They sleep in each other’s arms and they sleep solidly through the night. Then they wake up the next morning and do it all again.

Still exciting, somehow.


	9. Chapter 9

“So what _is_ the Baba Yaga?”

Snow crunches underfoot.

At first, they had a high-minded notion that their patrols of the preserve’s grounds were to be done separately, on alternating days. This would give them time apart, which would keep them from growing tired of each other. 

But Viggo always follows when Avi hikes alone, and Avi would rather have Viggo along so the old man gets some exercise. And it’s nice to walk together in the sun, when there is sun.

So they always walk together, mostly not talking, sometimes talking of nothing.

Viggo considers for a while, in the way that he does when he’s looking for words he almost never has to say in English. “Like, ah. Like a witch. She lives in the forest, in a house that walks on chicken legs. She eats bad children and rewards good children, if they do a task for her. Like if you fuck up, she eats you, but if she is pleased with you, you marry a tsar.” Viggo shrugs. “I do not remember the stories well.”

“No, I get that. I’m glad your priorities are in order. And you, ah,” he shoots Viggo a sidelong glance, “you called John Wick that?”

“It is a little on the nose, perhaps.”

He’s about to tell Viggo that _no it isn’t on the nose_ when Viggo throws an arm out across Avi’s chest and shushes him.

A deer steps out on the path ahead of them, head crowned with antlers. Its hooves make no sound in the snow. It pauses, turns to look at them. Its eyes are dark, liquid, eerily calm.

“I think I saw that one before,” Avi whispers to Viggo. “While I was freezing to death.”

“You want to take a shot at it?”

A gust of wind blows. The animal’s ears twitch.

“Not really,” Avi admits.

Viggo scoffs. “Soft.” But he says it fondly, patting Avi on the chest.

They stand there a long moment, breathing the icy air, watching as strange shadows from high-up branches play across the deer’s dappled back. Suddenly, the deer looks up.

Avi does too. 

What he sees looks like almost nothing, a white patch of snow on a high tree trunk. That happens sometimes, when the wind blows so hard that it packs snow onto the sides of the trees. At a glance, it’s unremarkable. But Avi does more than just glance, and that’s enough to realize that the patch of snow is not a patch, although it is holding very, very still.

Avi doesn’t think, just lifts the hunting rifle and fires.

The tree branch the figure in white is standing on explodes into splinters and they drop with a scream, hit the ground with a sickening crunch.

Viggo whistles, soft and low. “You’re really getting better, you know?”

Avi was aiming to hit the figure, not the branch, but Viggo doesn’t need to know that. “Are they dead?” Avi asks.

Viggo slides the rifle off his back. “Let’s go find out.”

It doesn’t take a genius. The fall broke their neck so badly that their head’s almost on backwards. If they weren’t dead, Viggo and Avi would have to kill them out of the goodness of their hearts.

“It is curious that this should happen twice in the short time we have lived here,” Viggo says, peering down at the prone figure in white. He sinks to his knees, plucks off their ski goggles. He regards their face for a long time. “You know this man?”

Avi steps closer, looks into the face of the man he killed. “Shit,” he says. “I do.”

He’s an unimpressive assassin, young and feckless, with a poor contract-to-kill ratio and a price tag to match. The kind of assassin regular people hire to settle domestic disputes and grudges at work. The kind Avi might hire to distract John Wick while the real assassin lined up the kill-shot from a block away.

He was on Avi’s shortlist, anyway.

Crouching in the snow, Avi asks, “John Wick wouldn’t hire someone else to kill you, would he?”

Viggo manages to look faintly offended. “Never. This is a personal matter.”

“That’s what I thought.” Avi rubs his hands together in the cold. “I don’t think _anyone_ would hire this guy to kill you; you’re just too high-priority. But what I _can_ see happening is this guy wanting to get in Wick’s good graces and tell him where to find you. But if this guy can find us, that means just about anyone can. So…”

Viggo already has a hold on Avi’s arm. “We must leave.”

They pause to rifle through the dead man’s pockets for gold coins and ammunition. But not for very long.

* * *

For the second time in just a few months, Avi stuffs a suitcase with the bare essentials. He drags it to the ground floor where he meets Viggo, coming up from the cellar with an armload of food.

“For the journey,” Viggo explains as he stuffs it into a milk crate. It’s travel food, perishable and lightweight. The less they have to concern themselves with, the better. 

“We should go to your cousins in Vladivostok. Not for long,” Avi says, in response to Viggo’s frown. “Just long enough for them to hire us some bodyguards under the table.”

Viggo snorts. “Fat lot of good this will do.”

“We don’t need them to kill John Wick; we just need them to kill anybody who might try to find us to impress John Wick. _I_ killed one of them. How hard can it be?”

Viggo seems to see the wisdom in that. “Very well. We will hire men in Vladivostok. And then what do you suggest?”

What _does_ he suggest? A cold chill runs down Avi’s spine. One thousand variables. No plan. 

“You have homes all over Russia,” he begins. “I rejected them as long-term safehouses because they were too widely known, but we could risk it. Especially with some of the more easily defended properties. I don’t know if a siege situation is what we want, but we might not have a choice.”

“A siege is not what I want,” Viggo says. “If we must be in hiding, I would prefer to be on the run.”

“Really?”

Viggo shrugs. “I'd like to travel. I do not think we should feel confined to the Russian houses. I would propose the penthouse in Hong Kong for our next destination.”

Avi leans heavy on his elbows. “Any reason in particular?”

“Marvelous security. One way in, one way out. Very easy to defend. When the enemy must enter through the elevator, even _you_ cannot miss.”

Avi ignores the dig. “Little high profile, isn’t it, Viggo?”

“Perhaps so, but in exchange, we get a helipad. From there we go to the next place, hold out as long as we can, and move on. We could do this for a while before running out of houses, if you need that much time to come up with something.” He takes Avi’s hand, squeezes it. “Not such a bad life, I don’t think.” 

Avi feels a smile cross his own face, shy and uncontrollable. “OK,” Avi breathes, shakily. “OK, you sold me. I’ll make the arrangements as soon as I can get a cell signal.”

Viggo thumps him hard on the shoulder. “Very good.”

And then they get back to packing.

They’re ready within the hour, boxes and bags and hunting rifles loaded into the back of the truck. It’s a small enough load that they could carry it on foot, if pressed.

There’s something oddly freeing about knowing he could carry his entire life on his back.

Freeing, but frightening.

It’s all like that.

Avi pauses for a moment halfway through climbing into the truck, door still wide open, one leg still on the ground."

Viggo, already behind the wheel, freezes. He leans close, concerned. “What are you thinking?”

Avi sighs, drums his gloved fingers on the frame of the door. “I’m thinking that we don’t know for sure that the dead guy told anybody where he was going or that we were here. And if we leave, we might be giving up our last real safe place for...for no reason. On a hunch. But we can’t afford to ignore that hunch, because even the possibility that it might be true is too dangerous. And I don’t...I don’t know where to go from here. I know where we’re going after this, but I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know what will go wrong. Even if everything goes right, I don’t know what will happen next. I don’t have an endgame, I just…” Avi trails off.

Viggo reaches out, tugs at Avi’s coat until he climbs into the passenger seat. “You are coming with me, yes?”

“Yes. No question.”

“Good.” He sticks the key in the ignition. “Close the door, please.”

Avi does. Immediately, the car warms up. “It’s just,” Avi says as Viggo throws the truck in reverse and backs out from around the cabin, “that you wanted me around so I could plan for every contingency, and I can’t do that for you anymore.”

Viggo groans, puts the truck back in park. He faces Avi, eyes serious. “All those years ago, you wanted to be close to me because I was a powerful man and together we could wield influence. Correct?”

Avi nods. No point in sugar-coating it. 

“I cannot do that for you anymore either. This is equitable. OK?”

“OK.” He reaches for Viggo’s hand, resting on the gear shift, and holds tight.

“I do not know if men like us are permitted to retire happily,” Viggo says. “But I would like to try, if you will help me do it.”

Avi’s speechless for a moment, still gripping Viggo’s hand. “OK,” he says again. “OK.” He wipes his eyes on his sleeve and Viggo pretends not to notice. “Well, if we’re gonna do this, we better get going. Vladivostok’s a long way away.”

“Good,” Viggo says, continuing to back the car away from the cabin. “I drive. You navigate.”

And together, they leave the safehouse for the last time.


End file.
